In today's podcast episode, we pick up our exploration of jazz fusion by looking at the amazing careers and music produced by a number of genius musicians who came out of Miles Davis' bands. We'll visit with Herbie Hancock, John McLaughlin and his band, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Joe Zawinul, Jaco Pastorious and the band Weather Report, Chick Corea and his bands Return to Forever and the Elektrik Band.
The forces that Miles pioneered and set in motion continued to evolve in multiple directions. You'll discover in today's episode, and you'll be able to hear from the musicians themselves about what it was like to play in these bands and create this adventurous, beautiful new music!
IN TODAY'S EPISODE:
Interview; Herbie Hancock from a lecture given at Harvard University
Herbie Hancock
Chameleon
Watermelon Man
Interview: John McLaughlin talks about what it was like to play with Miles Davis.
Graham Bond Organisation: Train Time
The Mahavishnu Orchestra
Inner Mounting Flame
One Word
Eternity's Breath Pt. 1
Weather Report
Birdland
Nubian Sundance
Tears
Herandnu
Interview: Jaco Pastorious talks about his collaboration with Joe Zawinul
Jaco Pastorious/ Weather Report
Teen Town
Interview: Pat Matheny
Interview: Chick Corea talks about joining Miles Davis' band.
Return to Forever
Return to Forever
Interview: Chick Corea talks about forming his band, Return to Forever
Spain
The Elektrik Band: Rumble
Steely Dan: Aja
In today's podcast episode, we pick up our exploration of jazz fusion by looking at the amazing careers and music produced by a number of genius musicians who came out of Miles Davis' bands. We'll visit with Herbie Hancock, John McLaughlin and his band, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Joe Zawinul, Jaco Pastorious and the band Weather Report, Chick Corea and his bands Return to Forever and the Elektrik Band.
The forces that Miles pioneered and set in motion continued to evolve in multiple directions. You'll discover in today's episode, and you'll be able to hear from the musicians themselves about what it was like to play in these bands and create this adventurous, beautiful new music!
IN TODAY'S EPISODE:
Interview; Herbie Hancock from a lecture given at Harvard University
Herbie Hancock
Chameleon
Watermelon Man
Interview: John McLaughlin talks about what it was like to play with Miles Davis.
Graham Bond Organisation: Train Time
The Mahavishnu Orchestra
Inner Mounting Flame
One Word
Eternity's Breath Pt. 1
Weather Report
Birdland
Nubian Sundance
Tears
Herandnu
Interview: Jaco Pastorious talks about his collaboration with Joe Zawinul
Jaco Pastorious/ Weather Report
Teen Town
Interview: Pat Matheny
Interview: Chick Corea talks about joining Miles Davis' band.
Return to Forever
Return to Forever
Interview: Chick Corea talks about forming his band, Return to Forever
Spain
The Elektrik Band: Rumble
Steely Dan: Aja
Greetings Everybody!
Thanks for making your way back to American Song.
In our last episode, we talked about the earliest days of jazz fusion, and then took some time to listen to some of Miles Davis’s monumental work, with albums like In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew. Today, we pick the story up from where we left off last time.
You might remember me telling you that many of the musicians and bands that followed in Miles footsteps came directly from his bands. So, let’s start today’s explore the music of some of the fantastic players that Miles ‘discovered’ and launched.
Herbie Hancock is one of the first musicians who came out of Miles band. Like many of the great artists, Herbie is multi-dimensional – so much more than just a musiscian. Here he is to tell you more about himself, and what makes such a powerful force in the world. Herbie interview.
Herbie Hancock brought elements of funk, disco, and electronic music into his commercially successful albums. Two of his best were Head Hunters from 1973, and Thrust, from 1974. On these albums, Herbie was experimenting in a jazz-funk direction, with heavy influence from artists like Sly and the Family Stone, Curtis Mayfield and James Brown.
Head Hunters was Herbie’s fourteenth album in which he was band leader, released six years, and eight albums after his last collaboration with Miles Davis. It was an early career, but pivotal album. Head Hunter’s features Herbie soloing over some of his own compositions; deeply funky, even gritty grooves. Whereas he’d been playing a Rhodes electric piano with Miles, in Head Hunters, he brought in an array of synthesizers. The synth was still very new, only having been introduced three or four years before this album was recorded. More than anyone, it was Herbie that brought this sound to the center spotlight in jazz.
The Head Hunters produced a totally accessible blend funk, soul and R&B that was still deeply rooted in jazz structure. With their very commercial sound, for a long time, Head Hunters was the biggest-selling jazz album ever. Ironically, an album recorded fifteen years before it - Miles Davis’ album, Kind of Blue has continued to sell over the years, and IT now holds that number one spot, with Head Hunters in close behind it at #2. Unfortunately, you can’t please everyone – while his fans loved the record, the critics panned it – just like what Miles had experienced.
In the 1996 line notes to the Head Hunters re-master, Herbie shared the internal dialog he was having in the weeks leading up to his change away from his more cerebral pure jazz, and toward his new sound in Head Hunters. He said, “By the end of 1972, my feeling was that the sextet had reached a peak, and it sustained that peak for a while, and we tried to go beyond that, but it was like fighting uphill. Each musician had found ways to get a real rapport going, but the sound wasn’t going any further and to me, it just wound up less focused.
We had this music that we were doing, and the thing was, how could we take this music in a new direction by making it more palatable, but still keep this essence of our original philosophy?
It happened one day. I was chanting. I knew I didn’t want to play the music I had been playing, but I didn’t know what music I wanted to play. Uppermost in my mind was that I knew I didn’t want to play what I’d been playing. I wanted to feel more earthy and be a little more grounded. I wanted to find the answers within myself.
Then I had this mental image of me playing in Sly Stone’s band, playing something funky like that. I knew I had to take the idea seriously. Would I like to have a funky band that played the kind of music Sly or someone like that was playing? My response was, “Actually, yes.”
On it’s release, the album’s Initial success came from college radio played at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, for instace Howard University in D.C. but it’s popularity soon found a much wider audience. Within a few months, the album went gold in the US, and besides being on nearly every funk band’s cover list, Chameleon – the track we’ve been listening to for a little while now - became a staple on FM radio and dance clubs.
The other huge hit from Head Hunters was Watermelon Man. To record it, Herbie reached back to one of his compositions from ten years prior and reworked it.
A year after Head Hunters, Hancock released Thrust, using the same band, with the exception of replacement drummer, Mike Clark.
About the line-up, he said, "Rather than work with jazz musicians that could play funk, I worked with funk musicians that could play jazz." Though only four songs in total length, two per vinyl side, Thrust is known as one of the great albums from Hancock’s entire career. The level of sophisticated syncopation and inventive rhythmic interplay between the musicians on here is just mind boggling. Every tune on this album is full of joy and kinetic energy.
The early 1970s were crazy-full with musical creativity, something we’ll continue to see in future episodes. Jazz was evolving like it hadn’t for years, reaching out to it’s musical grandchildren, Rock, Funk, Soul and also back to Mother Africa for additional rhythms and all these forms were melding into each other. Arbitrary rules about compositional form were being trash-canned, and the music was totally about improv and being deep into the moment. Herbie’s new drummer, Mike Clark, was quoted saying, "Each new Jazz record that came out pushed past the boundries set by the last one. We couldn't wait to hear what Miles, Tony Williams or Chick Corea was going to do next. The dam had broken, and creativity was just spilling out”!
The African poly-rhythms that burned under the chassis of Thrust were just the beginning. As usual, Herbie reeled off mind-bending electric piano solos and added a bed of brilliant mini-orchestrations, played on his fleet of analog keyboards and 70’s synthesizers. Meanwhile, the rest of his band was experimenting and re-writing the rules of funk, R&B and soul in every track. I especially love the wah-wah pedal effect that Hancock’s tenor player, Bennie Maupin layered into the overall vibe of this piece.
Herbie & Co. were intent on stretching the boundaries of progressive funk to its limits. The result is that "Thrust" was a fantastic quartet of songs that helped Herbie continue to build his audience.
This is the final track of the album. It’s called "Spank-A-Lee". The preceding tune on the album, Butterfly, puts me a sort of revery. Spank-A-Lee pulls me out of it like a rude slap in the face. At a jamming 111 BPM, the song sets the mood that's hotter than Hades. There are some jaw-dropping moments with Maupin's tenor saxophone fanning the flames as bass player, Paul Jackson and drummer Mike Clark continue to stoke the fire into a roiling inferno. Just when you think the whole band is going to blow itself up, the band throttles down – and you’re pretty sure you hear that same sort of hisssss that comes off of a pan that’s been on stove, burners set on high.
Miles also helped ignite the career of English guitarist, John McLaughlin. Throughout his career, McLaughlin continued to look back on his time with Miles as transformative experience. Here he is to tell us about that period in his life.
McLaughlin came from a family of musicians. His mother was a concert violinist and as a child, John studied violin and piano. At age 11, he picked up guitar as well. Django Reinhardt, and Stéphane Grappelli were early influences on his playing. By the early 1960’s, he was an in-demand studio session musician, and a teacher to another up and coming session player named Jimmy Page.
Train Time Graham Bond Organisation
By 1963, John was playing in a band called the Graham Bond Organization along with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker who famously went on to play with Eric Clapton in Cream. The Graham Bond Organisation played an eclectic range of genres, including bebop, blues and rhythm and blues. This is their song, Train Time. Bond, himself, played sax, keys and sang for the group.
McLaughlin debuted his own band in 1969, with an album called Extrapolation but by the end of that year was already moving on to live in the US, and joined with yet another Miles Davis discovery, Tony Williams in the Tony Williams Lifetime. In that year, he had a singular jam experience with Jimi Hendrix whose music would go on to inform McLaughlin’s playing even more than his experience with Miles had. About that 2 a.m. to 8 a.m. night of jamming, McLaughlin said, “Yeah, what a lovely time! Had Jimi lived today, you'd find that he would be employing everything he could get his hands on, and I mean acoustic guitar, synthesizers, orchestras, voices, anything he could get his hands on he'd use!"
During that inspired first year in New York, McLaughlin earned a reputation as the session guitarist of choice, playing and recording with Miroslav Vitous, Larry Coryell, Joe Farrell, Wayne Shorter, the Rolling Stones, and others.
The Inner Mounting Flame - Meeting of the Spirits
In 1971, McLaughlin formed his band, The Mahavishnu Orchestra. In August, the band recorded their first album, The Inner Mounting Flame, and it was released in November of that same year. In an age that preceded world-music, McLaughlin’s band combined Indian classical music, jazz and psychedelic rock to create something entirely new. To me, it feels like the band are trying as hard as they can to out rock every single rock band on the planet – and they achieve their goal. This is an intense, complicated set of songs with very few stops for water or a chance to even catch your breath. The musicians, John McLaughlin on guitar, Jerry Goldman on violin, Jan Hammer on piano, Rick Laird on bass, and Billy Cobham on drums weave intricate patterns around each other’s playing on every track. We’re listening to Meeting of the Spirits – the opening song on the album. It kicks off with a fanfare, followed by what I consider a tease – a brief period of relative peace and quiet – before it explodes into this unrelenting, balls to the walls, pedal to the metal jam which only lets up once the track is actually over. This music is like Duke Ellington meets Metalicca for a duel to the death.
As an electric band, Mahavishnu Orchestra threw off lots of sparks, and some of these were between the members. The personality clashes led to a split in the group in 1973, just two years and three albums into their career. In a 1973 Crawdaddy! Interview, Laird, and Hammer were pretty pointed about their dissatisfaction with John McLaughlin - especially what they called his heavy handed Buddhist spirituality and also their status as sidemen in the band. Although they made important contributions to the band’s compositions, it was McLaughlin that was receiving all the credit. Hammer claimed that McLaughlin was leading the band by “Divine Right”, and saw himself as an enlightened guru. Hammer continued saying that McLaughlin had swung from one extreme - heavy drug use - to the other, being totally vegetarian, and trying to cleanse his system and find peace of mind.
Visions of the Emerald Beyond – Eternity’s Breath Pt. 1
Resolving to start again, McLaughlin reformed the band, replacing Cobham with Narada Michael Walden on drums, and Jean-Luc Ponty on violin in place of Jerry Goodman, Ralphe Armstrong replaced Rick Laird as the group’s bassist, and Gayle Moran replaced Jan Hammer on keys. McLaughlin also introduced strings and a horn section for the first time. In this formation, two more albums were released - Apocalypse with the London Symphony Orchestra and Visions of the Emerald Beyond.
In the 1980’s, McLaughlin relaunched his band for the third time, achieving a very different sound this time around due to his extensive use of the synclavier, a synth-guitar instrument. Two albums were released, Mahavishnu and Adventures in Radioland. Eternity’s Breath Part 1 is from Mahavishnu.
Joe Zawinul was another alumnus from Miles Davis monumental career. His prowess on the keys is legendary. After his time with Davis, he went on to form the band, Weather Report.
At their height, Weather Report served as the incubator and launch pad for an impressive who’s-who of world-class musicians. Saxophonist Wayner Shorter, another former Davis collaborator, enjoyed a solo career of wonderful depth and invention. And Weather Report’s bass player, Jaco Pastorius, is in the running for the world’s best bassist of all time. We’re listening to their song, Birdland, recorded in 1977. It’s from Weather Report’s album Heavy Weather - one of the best selling, fusion albums, ever.
While a lot of fusion bands tried, Weather Report actually succeeded in fusing jazz traditions with rock, rhythm and blues and even world music. With Weather Report, the music never sounded contrived. It was always very organic and natural. Also, while a lot of fusion bands tended to move too far in the direction of rock, losing the jazz-rock balance, Weather Report always managed to hang onto the depth and spontaneity that’s so important in jazz.
In addition to being a consultant on a number of important Ken Burns documentaries, including the critically acclaimed Jazz docu-series from 2001, Gerald Early is an essayist, anthropologist, Professor of English and of African and African-American Studies at Washington University. In Burns’ Jazz series, Early said that, “For a long time, what Weather Report was trying to do, in a more structured way than what Miles Davis was doing, was to have a band where the ensemble was as powerful as the soloists and no one was really soloing. So, they were really picking up some ideas from Miles in the late 60’s. It tended to work to some degree, but as the albums went along, the idea kind of broke down some, but originally Weather Report was a band that was trying to get away from theme-solos-theme, and the idea that the solos would sort of be part of the ensemble and it would all be this sort of seamless thing; you really couldn’t tell the solos from the ensembles and so forth. At their best, I think they were among the better fusion bands.”
Mysterious Traveller - Nubian Sundance
Weather Report released a total of 14 studio albums, four live albums, and 11 compilation albums. Some of their finest music can be found on their albums, Mysterious Traveller, recorded in 1974, in the pre-Jaco Pastorious era (Pastorious being their legendary bassist, some say the greatest bass player of all time. It was their first record to use an electric bass, and it also blends funk, R&B and rock, into a very powerful and unique sound.
Their self-titled first album from 1971 is another one you should really add to your libraries, or at least check out on Spotify or one of the streaming services. Another very fine album from Weather Report. My favorite two cuts on this album are this one, ‘Tears’, composed by their sax player, Wayne Shorter, and Waterfall, by Joe Zawinul. Their drummer, Alphonse Mouzon handled the atmospheric vocals, nicely, I think.
Weather Report’s album Black Market was the first to feature bass virtuoso, Jaco Pastorious as well as bassist Alphonso Johnson. Chester Thompson, who some of you may know was Genesis’ touring drummer for many years, plays drums on the album.
Here’s Jaco to tell us about his writing collaboration with Joe Zawinul around that time:
This is my favorite track from the album, it’s called Herandnu. It’s written in a really interesting 11/4 time signature (quarter note gets one full count, eleven beats per measure before the next emphasized down beat). Released in ’76, this album marked the start of the band’s most commercial period. Another thing I like about this track is that Wayne Shorter plays an instrument called a lyricon – it’s a synthesized saxophone. Later in the same track, he also switches to tenor sax.
I really should say something about Jaco, especially if you don’t know much about him. He started his musical life in the mid-sixties, initially as a drummer, and playing in a soul music cover band called Las Olas Brass. At some point, a better drummer introduced himself to the rest of the band and Jaco would have been out, if not for the fact that the bass player quit at the same time. This opened a second opportunity for Jaco. Using the money he earned from his paper route, he bought a fender jazz bass.
Roll tape, and fast forward to the early 1970’s and Jaco has by now been in several professional bands, including a gig on a cruise ship, sailing the Caribbean along with his wife, Tracy and their daughter, Mary. Jaco learned to read music, compose and to arrange in this period. Jaco talked about his evolution in an interview. Let’s check it out: Soon after, he befriended the future guitar great, Pat Matheny, and along with several other players, they recorded Jaco’s first album. Jaco also played with Matheny on his Bright Sized Life album. Here’s Pat talking about that moment in time. The bassist who had taught himself to play, also became an Adjunct Professor of Music at Boston’s Berklee college. In 1975, Jaco introduced himself to Joe Zawinul as the ’greatest bass player in the world’. After Zawinul heard Jaco’s first album, he was inclined to believe him, and invited Jaco to join Weather Report in 1975. Jaco stayed with the band until 1981. He played on two Joni Mitchell album’s in 1976, and 1977 – Hejira and Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter, respectively. About her experience with Jaco, Joni said, “In a way, I feel like I dreamed Jaco. I mean, he was exactly what I was waiting for, sonically. . . .” She felt he was such an important part of her sound that she invited him to tour with her during her 1979 tour.
Jaco’s final years are just too sad for me to dwell on. You can read a lot about it, the information’s out there. The thumb-nail sketch of his final years goes like this. He started showing erratic behavior in the early 1980’s, and his live gigs became very inconsistent. He could be brilliant on one evening, and the next night would be a total disaster. He turned to drugs and alcohol to self-medicate, and he was also on lithium which he complained about due to the way it made him feel. He eventually checked himself into Bellevue for psychiatric evaluation and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He died on September 21, following a severe beating he received at a club in Fort Lauderdale in which his skull was fractured, leading to a brain hemorrhage. Tragic. One way to understand the impact of an artist’s work is to listen to what others have said.
Here’s John McLaughlin, again:
Here’s Herbie Hancock:
Here’s Joni Mitchell:
Here’s Flea, from the Red Hot Chili Peppers:
Here’s Pat Matheny:
One last artist we have to talk about in today’s episode is Chick Corea, who had played keys Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew and In a Silent Way. It seems it always comes back to Miles! Here’s Chick to talk about joining Miles band:
After leaving Miles’ band, in the fall of 1971, Chick formed a band called Return to Forever with several other giants from the fusion world, including Stanley Clarke on bass and Al Di Meola on guitar. Return to Forever forged a unique blend of jazz, rock, pop, and Brazilian music.
So much has been said about Chick Corea. I only ever had the opportunity to see him play live once, during a matinee concert at Southern California’s Segerstrom Center, but it was an occasion that blew me away. During the concert, he shifted effortlessly from acoustic to electric numbers, from ballads to hard-edged fusion. Corea was a musician who ably performed on another plane. You got the sense that nothing in this world meant more to him than playing his music, and that his drug of choice was a rapid keyboard run or an unexpected chord change. He played with classical precision and delicacy, but the notes came out of his machine sounding cosmic, spiraling out into space.
Chick’s band was an alumni club from the Stan Getz band. Besides bassist, Stanley Clarke, and guitarist, Al Di Meola, Return to Forever’s initial line-up also included Joe Farrell on woodwinds, a Brazilian husband-and-wife team; percussionist, Airto Moreira, and his wife, vocalist, Flora Purim. Their first gig was at the famous New York jazz club, the Village Vanguard nightclub. Let’s listen in as Chick talks about his original intentions with Return to Forever:
Their self-titled first album was recorded in just two days at the beginning of February, 1972, with songs composed either by Chick or Stanley Clark. We’re listening to the initial track on the album, also called Return to Forever.
Light as a Feather
After a tour of Japan, Chick brought the band back to New York to record their follow up album, Light As a Feather. In my mind, the best two songs on this album are Spain, which was composed by Chick Corea and Joaquin Rodrigo, and Captain Marvel, which, owing to the Corea/ Stan Getz relationship, was recorded by Getz in the same year. It’s an incredible collection of fusion compositions, having been named the 1972 Playboy Jazz Album of the year, selected in many polls as one of the greatest jazz albums ever recorded, listed on the Stereophile list of "Records to Die For" and featured on the American saxophonist, author, and music critic, Tom Moon's 1,000 Albums to Hear Before You Die. Moon’s CV includes writing for Rolling Stone, GQ, Blender, Spin, Vibe, Harp, and he’s been a regular contributor to NPR’s All Things Considered since 1996.
Chick Corea – Elektrik Band - Rumble
In total, Return to Forever released 13 albums, including two live albums. However, his complete discography includes many albums without Return to Forever, including solo piano works, duets, other bands, such as his Elektrik Band. He worked in rock, jazz, and classical genres and made 71 studio albums, and 26 live albums, playing with other jazz greats like Herbie Hancock, Lionel Hampton, Lee Konitz, Bobby McFerrin, Gary Burton, John McLaughlin, Bela Fleck and Steve Gadd. He also appeared on other musician’s albums as a sideman, including Stanley Clarke, Al Dimeola, Wayne Shorter, Stan Getz, and Miles Davis. In fact, Chick played with Miles on 15 studio and live albums, before and after Bitches Brew.
Not many people know that Chick, who passed away last year, in 2021, also played drums at a very high level. In fact, he was SO good, that Steve Gadd, widely recognized as one of the best drummers ever said this about Chick as a drummer, “His approach and what he did was so free. Here’s a piano player playing the drums in a way that I never thought of. My playing changed that night. Overnight. It sort of cleared some things up for me.” In a separate interview, Corea, widely respected for his composition strengths, said this about Gadd, “Every drummer wants to play like Steve because he plays perfect. He’s brought orchestral and compositional thinking to the drum kit while at the same time having a great imagination and a great ability to swing."
CLOSE
Steely Dan - Aja
In this episode, we’ve picked up a conversation we last had about jazz in June, 2021, in the episode, Jazz: in Defense of Equality and Justice For All.
We saw how jazz, in the late 1960’s and 1970’s, adapted to changing music preferences – a reaction to the birth of rock, funk, and R&B. Making those changes opened doors for newer audiences, and opened careers for talented musicians. I could literally go on and on. The musicians played at such a high level of excellence. There are so many more bands that continue to play this music, including some new ones that we’ll explore in future episodes. If you’re looking for more, I’d suggest you check out the music of Jean Luc Ponty, Frank Zappa, The Crusaders, Stanley Clark, Alan Holdsworth, the Yellow Jackets, and Lee Ritenour just to name a few.
Along with changing preferences, the world itself had become smaller since jazz had first risen out of New Orleans. Mass media changed people’s access to new music. While starting out as an American art form, jazz had become a global phenomenon. The musicians who played in the bands we’ve talked about today came from a diverse set of geographic, cultural, religious and ethnic backgrounds. This was also very different from earlier decades when at one time there was a pretty rigid color line – even in a music that had been created by African Americans. Once again, we have this beautiful example of how diversity in music, as an example of our entire nation, has been made better because we’ve learned to work together and value each otherand how our diverse background
Next month, we’ll see how jazz influenced the rock side of the house. We’ll talk about bands like Steely Dan, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Chicago, Traffic and many others.
As always, if you’re interested to learn even more about all this great music, please check out our reference links on Facebook, at American Song Podcast. Also, if you’re enjoying this podcast series, please tell the other music lovers in your life about it and help us grow our audience!
For the American Song podcast, this is Joe Hines. Thanks for listening, everybody!